by Ric Beard
“I can auto-run the engine while you sleep. In hostile territory, the thermal blanket in the compartment beneath the passenger seat is recommended.”
“Good shit. I’ll use the blanket.”
The seat popped up, startling him.
Another nice touch. Who makes this thing?
Lucian strapped an ice pack around his head to cover his swollen eye. He tied another to his hand. There were no more straps or ropes he could find to adhere to the welt on his forehead where the rifle butt had made contact, so he cursed, laid back in the seat, and left it alone.
He drifted off.
Part Seven
The West
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ninety-Teeth
Day 4
Friday, Mar 22, 2137
Outside OK City
Sean was jostled around the cramped cargo space as the vehicle bounced over obstacles in transition from the city to the outside world. Just looking down into the tight space back at Alexandra’s had given him the creeps. He’d done his best to hide his apprehension from Carson and the others as he swallowed it down and packed himself into the trunk. He hadn’t fooled Carson though, who promised him the ride wouldn’t take long.
He’d lied.
A line of blue light tracing the edge of the compartment gave dim illumination to the cargo area, so at least he didn’t have to lie down in the dark. But there’d been more light in his prison cell all those years ago, and it hadn’t helped then, either.
The vehicle bounced again. Sean realized it wasn’t as much a bounce as a hover. That or the shocks on the vehicle were just so responsive that it glided up and down when encountering different terrain heights. The smooth up-and-down flow of the movement combined with his chagrin about the tight space made his chest tighten. His breaths were short. His head pounded. The walls of the trunk seemed like rippling waves moving closer. He was sweating like a whore in church…
Satan’s nutsack.
A blind lesbian in a fish market.
…whichever made him laugh long enough to forget where he was.
After what seemed like centuries, the craft finally came to a halt.
The driver, a stocky man with a mouth near as wide as his broad-brimmed hat, released the latch and looked down at Sean. He smiled with about ninety teeth.
“You’re sweating like a badlander at a dining table, senor.” He offered a hand to drag Sean out of the trunk. “Good ride, si?”
“Sure,” Sean said as he rubbed his shoulder. He tried to mentally force his hands to stop shaking, then opted to shove them in his pockets. The world was still waving around him, the ground beneath him was still unsettled. He stumbled around to the side of the truck, leaned on a rusted car and puked on an old tire. Only then did things start to stabilize and his breathing begin to normalize.
“You good?”
“Yeah.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, stood up straight, and took a deep breath. Sharp scents of rubber and oil helped to balance his senses. “Better.”
“Don’t like the tight spaces, eh?”
About as much as you like brushing those teeth.
“They’re right up there with an enema.” Sean circled the vehicle to escape the subject.
When he walked out of Alexandra’s, the truck had been parked with its trunk to the door. Circling it now, he let out a whistle that came up short between parched lips. The wedge-shaped monster was a poetic incarnation of metal and glass, a slick-assed tribute to both aerodynamics and wealth. Judging from the monster tracks on which it rolled, Sean wondered if ol’ Ninety-teeth hadn’t been shaking him around a bit on purpose. The ride should’ve been smooth.
Ninety-teeth poked Sean in the arm and presented his palm.
“Your handheld.”
“Why?” Sean asked.
“Because, Miss Bingham wants you to use a new one. Supposedly, it works on both cities’ wireless networks. And it’ll let you sync up with that,” the man jerked his head toward the vehicle. Sean stared at him a moment, then back to the handheld in his hand. “I don’t got all day, zarigüeya.”
Sean handed it over, realizing the man didn’t give two shits about his reservations. He was here to do his job and Sean was little more than exactly what Ninety-teeth had called him. A possum ready to play dead.
After transferring Sean’s data to the multi-network model, Ninety-teeth crushed the old one under his boot as Sean’s eyes perused the ruins of what looked like an old auto repair shop. The cylindrical car lifts in two of the three mechanic bays were in the up position, towering overhead. Brown and orange with thousands of little bumps covering their exterior surfaces, they reminded him of the one constant in the world outside the city’s walls—rust. It was everywhere. It was the norm. Everything was covered in it. The two lifts were so engulfed by the product of oxidation he’d have never known they once gleamed silver. The tool benches were the exact same shade of rust, though they’d probably been red or black before the moisture and a century of neglect ruined them.
There was something demented about parking this shiny babe of a machine in this rusted out old-world shit hole. As Sean looked out the bay doors to the rolling green hills, he saw four sets of muddy tracks marks cut in a swath by the machine as they’d approached the structure.
No wonder I was jostling about. He didn’t use roads to get here. They weren’t risking being spotted by the military patrols. Shit. This is all seedy as hell. I thought Bingham was connected to the military. If they were hiding the machine from them, why did I need to be in the storage compartment? He gave that final thought a minute of air, letting it roll around in his mind. They didn’t want me to see the path they took to get out of the city. They have an unmonitored entry point or are bribing someone. If she’s hiding this vehicle from the military and Defense Forces as we roll it out of town, does that mean it’s stolen?
Something told Sean it was a bad idea to ask.
Ninety-teeth was squinting at him when Sean returned his gaze to the man. “Give Jensen the handheld when you get there. It’s a prototype, like the proto-tank. Comprende?”
Sean nodded. Proto-tank, huh?
He tapped the handheld to open the door. It folded in half, the seam in the center of the door pushing outward and sliding to the right as the bottom corners slid on rails. It reminded Sean of an unfolding switchblade.
“Get in,” Ninety-teeth ordered. Sean didn’t really want to get back into another tight space yet.
At least the windshield is wide.
He took a deep breath, slid into the firm leather seat, but left the door open. It wasn’t like he knew how to close it yet, anyway. Ninety-teeth started thrusting his finger at the controls, describing each one in a cacophony of rattled syllables that made Sean’s head spin.
“You have a control screen on your windshield.”
“A H.U.D.?” Sean said.
“Whatever.” He continued pointing. “This is your forty-mil pulse cannon. It can auto target, or go manual. Just arm the cannon, aim it in the right direction, and it will hurl death at anything in front for about three hundred yards.”
“Shit.”
“Órale, but you have just a single backup if you burn out the main power system while lighting shit up.” He pointed to the back seat. “It’s under that bench in a compartment. And that cannon will eat up power if you let it crank for long intervals. Chews through just under a quarter of each battery per volley. They’re still working out the kinks.”
“So four volleys, then reload.”
“Si. But keep in mind your idea is to be stealthy, not to run around the badlands wreaking havoc. You also got a simple auto pilot. It can handle easy stuff like homing in on and circling a target. I wouldn’t trust it on the roads for long distances, especially a cracked road no one’s paved in a century.” He straightened up and glared down at Sean in the driver’s seat. “I’ve taken this thing up to 160 M-P-H. But, hombre, I wouldn’t recommend it. Sure, you’re covered in armo
r, but that won’t save ya from plowing into a big ass rock.”
“What about fuel?” Sean asked.
“Something about recycling hydrogen with solar power,” Ninety-teeth answered. “Ya don’t gotta fill it up.”
“Solar cells?” Sean didn’t remember seeing any panels on the roof.
Ninety-teeth patted the shiny exterior of the tank. “Whole thing is covered in small ones that make up the paint job.”
“Wow.” Sean was trying to take it all in. A question occurred to him. “Defense Force Road Teams using these?”
“Fuck no, hombre!” Ninety-teeth replied. “We wouldn’t waste this shit on them. Jensen has the resources to replicate the tech, so we’re sending it to him—and that’s more than you need to know. Got it?”
“Gotcha,” Sean said. Why waste this kind of technology on people who dragged their asses hundreds of miles from home to risk those same asses trying to save the lives of the poor bastards who end up on the wrong side of the fuck-wits who went full caveman about a century ago and never looked back? “Miss Bingham got this how?”
“I don’t know, and you don’t care.”
Touchy.
Rain from the front edge of the system he’d spotted to the west started to patter the nose of the proto-tank as it stuck out from the work bay.
“You got a ride coming?”
“You got enough shit to worry about. I’ll wait in here.” He pointed down a cracked swath of asphalt. “Ride that way ’til you see a ramp with guard rails. Turn there. Take the highway east. Follow the ‘40’ signs that haven’t rusted off their posts, and it will take you all the way to Triangle City.” Sean followed Ninety-teeth’s gaze back toward the west. Dark clouds were forming on the horizon with flashes of light illuminating cotton ball fluff above the straight line of a cloud wall. He looked back at Sean and started rattling again. “No wipers. The glass repels the rain, but if it gets too heavy, run autopilot for a while. Try not to stop more than you have to. You got radar, use it. Should help you avoid any road crews. Chain territory picks up about sixty miles east.
The Chain. They’re the ones who like to tie people to poles and leave them for wildlife to chew on.
“What’s in the space between?” Sean asked. “The Horde isn’t this far east, yet, are they?”
“A trail of bodies the road crews left behind as a gift to those who fuck with them while they’re trying to do their jobs. You don’t want to try making friends out there or else they may get nosy about this.” He tapped the tank with the side of his fist.
“Got it. Thanks.”
“No hay problema. Good luck, zarigüeya.”
The silver proto-tank’s tracks rolled onto the interstate about an hour later. Even with the generous width of the cabin, being out here in no-man’s land again had him on edge, and it seemed like the tank’s exterior was folding inward on him. The asphalt was wrecked for as far as Sean could see. Cracks in its surface were like roots had grown wild, violating its integrity and sending jutting blocks of asphalt upward as if shaken by an earthquake. A plethora of rusted out vehicles stacked and flattened on either side of the interstate stood as monuments in memorandum of how humanity fled the cities when the oil ran low and heads started rolling in the streets. As if on cue, thunder rolled above. The storm wall was catching up.
The tank’s shocks adjusted for all the bumps and holes in the surface as if he was cruising on linen. He looked along the horizon off to the north side of the interstate between the stacks of rusted motor death and saw green for miles. An unsteady wind created ripples across the grass shadowed by the blanket of incoming clouds from the north and west. Sean looked back and saw forks of lightning cross the sky.
He cranked up the engine, got some momentum, and rode off into the east, hoping to put some distance between the proto-tank and the nasty-looking cell chasing it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
So Much Shit
Southwest of Triangle City
Kade Reynolds imagined the coldness of the outcropping of rocks pressed into his back was akin to lying nude on a metal table in a coroner’s office. As many cold, rainy days as he’d spent out in the badlands with the expeditionary forces, his expectation was that he’d have a thicker layer of skin for freezing his ass off, but this morning the air was particularly frigid, and something about the orange haze in the western sky and the metal scent on the air made him think of snow.
The truck was late, of course. They’d tracked the oil rigs for months. They were always late. All the technological advancements of the modern city, all the effort to clear roads and secure land, and they still couldn’t run the trucks on time. That was government for you. This tanker on wheels was already twenty minutes behind, though, and that was either a sign of exceptional incompetence or that they had run into trouble.
Oh, I hope not. I was really hoping to be their trouble today.
Kade wondered how long he’d waited for this moment, how long he’d been itching to stick it to someone so richly deserving of it. Finally, a chance to give Mayor Vaughn a little dose of discredit to start the dominos falling. He’d been wanting to stick it to the bastard ever since he turned his unit south, with the rest of the Triangle City army, giving up on his own daughter and Kade’s closest friend.
Kade was at least fifty miles inside the security perimeter that stretched all the way to what used to be Statesville, but he’d received no alerts from his Tab, signaling a drone overhead. Still, he grew antsier by the moment. Perhaps the rumors were true. Maybe Vaughn had really lost his sense and tasked all of them to the south to cover the aforementioned expeditionary crews. He could see why the higher-flying, weaponized drones might be sent south, but he wasn’t even seeing the propeller-based machines usually heard from the ground.
If Reagan hadn’t been dead when that coward turned tail, she surely was now. The emotional hole in his chest caused by a reminiscent pang of loss opened up for a moment as he saw Reagan Vaughn’s face, and Kade had to push it away, focus on how what he was doing would stick it to her father.
Bless Miles Copeland for affording me this opportunity.
Though the booze had played its part in filling that hole, numbing him to the atrocious loss, he’d still had that itch to go psycho, the way he and Reagan used to do it out in the badlands. Kade stifled the thought again and ground his teeth.
Where in the hell is that truck? What possible reason could there be for it to be this late?
Whatever the reason, he was colder than a sturgeon on ice, and being out here—with no booze to fill his voids—was starting to grind on his nerves.
He readied his weapon, yet again, and checked the power meter, yet again. His shoulder raised and fell in a quick motion as he huffed out his exasperation and looked up. The sky darkened with each minute, and Kade heard distant thunder starting to beat in the atmosphere. His fingers drummed an even rhythm on the stock of his weapon.
Strange.
He rolled and peeked over the top of the rocks. Positioned on a tripod beneath a tree line on the other side of the road was a remote controlled rifle with a targeting unit manufactured by JenCorp. The zoomed infra setting on his SmartGlasses enabled his view of the subtle red dot in the middle of the road, but it would be impossible to see with the naked eye, unless the legends about badlander experimentations with human mutations were true—which he doubted. If the driver was wearing Smarts, it was unlikely he had them on infra setting.
A rumbling sound coupled with the spitting of road gravel nearby signaled the arrival of the oil tanker as it rolled around a curve and into view. Guards stood on the steps outside either door, holding onto rails fashioned into the side of the cab. In their other hand, they held carbine rifles pointed upward as if to threaten the sky. They wore heavy coats with fur lining on the hoods that also served to wrap around their necks. Kade looked from the truck to the dot and back again several times, waiting for it to close the distance.
It’s like the fucker is movin
g in slow motion.
The truck closed in as the thunder grew louder, and Kade’s thumb hovered over the button of the radio control unit. The second the front wheels covered the dot, he pushed the button and a short burst of gunfire erupted from the opposite ridge. The truck ground to a halt as the men riding shotgun outside the cab began yelling, the driver’s door opened, and the two guards hit the ditches on either side of the road, scanning for a sniper. The driver then leapt out of the truck, comically falling on his face and sending his rifle sailing out in front of him. He recovered, grabbed the rifle, and crawled into the ditch.
Kade dropped behind the rock outcropping and brought up the sniper array control system on his Tab. He looked down the hill from the perspective of the weapon and aimed it high and away from the truck before firing a few short bursts. He could hear the men yelling orders at each other at the bottom of the hill. It didn’t sound like they knew who was in charge. Kade chuckled, surprising himself. He watched the display and waited. The guard in the ditch closest to the array was looking around, but he wasn’t looking in the direction of the gun. Kade needed to change that.
He pointed the gun higher and fired again. The guard’s head snapped to the side. Kade zoomed in and saw the guard finally looking in the general direction of the sniper’s nest. He fired again in search of the desired result. The guard saw the report, radioed his partners, and started crawling along the ditch to the east.
Kade peeked over the outcropping. The other two men were wrapping around on the opposite side of the truck. He turned and dropped to his ass, giving them a couple minutes to get closer to the gun. His heart thumped his rib cage, even though he had hardly moved.
The adrenaline coursing through his system conjured less heady, vivid memories. So much shit out there. So much death and so much hate. He had no idea how many unsuspecting human beings he’d mowed down with auto arrays like this one. This was the first weapon he’d fired since Reagan was kidnapped, the forces refused to go after her, and he retired out of anger. When men in positions of power, including her own fucking father, did nothing to help him find her, Kade Reynolds saw no other option than to become a member of The Underground. And his cohorts had shown up at just the right time to recruit him, like they knew everything that was going on.
